


i cannot go to the ocean

by figure8



Series: run this town [6]
Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Codependency, M/M, Organized Crime, Prison, Unhealthy Relationships, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Violence, this sounds so awful! probably because it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-27 22:29:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16711234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/pseuds/figure8
Summary: To this day, Yixing regrets an absurd amount of things, but never the fact Yifan is behind bars.





	i cannot go to the ocean

**Author's Note:**

> SURPRISE here it is ive hinted at it soooo much that i dont think anyone is actually surprised but YEAH. here’s yixing’s side story. which is, to me, the real tragedy of the mob au lmao and also the most interesting relationship i have ever written and GOD i wish i could write them their own god dang novel but they’re not That kind of characters. ANYWAY. a few things:  
> \- **i cannot stress this enough this will NOT make sense if you havent read by my own law and contains MAJOR spoilers, especially for chapter 6.**  
>  \- i didnt know how to tag more specifically but there’s a bunch of allusions to UGLY ugly stuff like prison rape and human trafficking and torture  
> \- this wasnt beta-ed so uhhh im really sorry in advance for the typos/etc i might have missed t__t
> 
> ENJOY! I LOVE YOU ALL!

_Goodbye, my almost lover_  
_Goodbye, my hopeless dream_  
_I'm trying not to think about you_  
_Why can't you just let me be?_  
  
_So long, my luckless romance_  
_My back is turned on you_  
_Should've known you'd bring me heartache_  
_Almost lovers always do_

 

Yifan is still beautiful even in this horrid orange jumpsuit. Yixing drinks him in, the sight of him, the everlasting contradiction of his angelic smile.

“Hello, Kris,” he says softly, and Yifan laughs quietly.

“Long time no see, Inspector.”

“It’s Captain now, actually,” Yixing corrects him. Yifan stares longly at that. It hangs heavy between them, the price that had to be paid for Yixing to climb up the ranks as fast as he did. The cuffs around Yifan’s wrists are a constant reminder of that particular trade-off.

“Congratulations,” Yifan says finally. Yixing feels sick to his stomach.

 

\--

 

For the rest of his life, Yifan will remember the day of his arrest. How hot and rough the concrete felt against his cheek, the knee digging viciously into his back to keep him on the ground. They got him in the middle of a deal, the SWAT team surrounding his black SUV, his men hands up in the air like children caught stealing from the cookie jar. Yixing was there, right beside him, and when Yifan closes his eyes he sees it clear as day, the cops dragging Yixing away from him, Yixing kicking and screaming. He still tastes the bitterness of fear on his tongue, years after. Even now, knowing it was all for show, there is no cleansing his organism from these few seconds of animal instinct in the chaos.

Yifan keeps these last instants locked away in a box deep inside his brain, tucked into a corner, hidden. The last time he ever looked at _Lay_ , before he knew his name was Zhang Yixing. Frozen, forever in his mind, Lay’s eyes dark and upset and afraid and looking for Yifan’s. Always looking for Yifan’s.

 

\--

 

“How are you? Are they treating you well?” Yixing asks. He always does. Yifan’s answer never changes, even when it’s evident that he’s lying, sporting black eyes and cuts that he wears like badges of honor. This sort of pride, he knows, Yixing understands. He was one of them long enough.

“Yes. I’m peachy. Did you get a new office with your shiny promotion?” Yifan teases.

“Yes,” Yixing says, but he looks uncomfortable. Yifan presses, because it’s always been what he does best.

“Describe it to me. It’s my money that built the building, after all.”

Yixing glares. “You know it doesn’t work that way.”

“My empire, then,” Yifan shrugs. “My men’s lives, _my_ freedom, that’s what it took to get your name on a shiny plaque. I think I deserve a fucking virtual tour, don’t you?”

Yixing leaves. Yifan is neither surprised nor disappointed.

 

\--

 

The thing is, this unspoken _connection,_ how the air used to crackle every time they touched, not even prison walls can break it.

 

\--

 

They dream of each other. In Yixing’s dreams they fuck. In Yifan’s dreams Yixing kills him.

 

\--

 

“You look like shit,” Yifan offers him in lieu of greeting. He does. He caught a glimpse of his own reflection earlier, and there are bags under his eyes, and his skin is ashy.

“I feel like shit.” He doesn’t bother denying it. Yifan tilts his head to the side. Yixing thinks, _fuck it,_ and sits down opposite him. The metal of the chair is cold even through the fabric of his jeans. Yifan’s jumpsuit is way thinner than what Yixing is wearing.

“Give me your hand,” Yifan commands. _Commands,_ doesn’t ask, because some things just don’t change.

“No touching,” Yixing shakes his head. “Rule number one, remember?”

“Give me your fucking hand, Lay,” Yifan says. “No one’s watching.” Yixing puts his hand on the table, palm facing up. Yifan’s covers it completely. Right under the cuff, Yixing’s fingers read the texture of a new scar. “You’re shaking,” Yifan remarks quietly.

“I’m _tired,_ ” Yixing snaps. “I haven’t slept correctly in weeks.” He presses his index into Yifan’s skin. “What’s this?”

Yifan chuckles bitterly; a surprised bark more than a laugh, really. “I’m not trying to kill myself, if that’s what you’re asking,”

Yixing doesn’t like the way his stomach tightens at the thought. “No, I’m just asking _what’s this._ ”

“Sometimes your buddies aren’t the friendliest. That’s it, officer, simple as that. Don’t go and make up scenarios in that pretty head of yours.”

“Yifan,” Yixing says, hoping he sounds serious enough, professional enough. “Yifan, what exactly are you saying?”

Yifan gives him a pointed stare and no verbal answer to his question. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

Yixing tries to take back his hand. Yifan doesn’t let him. “You’re not my shrink.”

“Then why do you keep coming here, Captain Zhang? Looking for absolution?”

He scoffs. “You’re not my priest either.”

“Yeah,” Yifan smirks, “Never felt that close to the good Lord.”

They don’t say anything, after a while. Yixing is still touching the inside of Yifan’s wrist, purposely, searching.

“Someone cuffed me too tight. That’s it, Lay, stop torturing yourself.” He sounds exhausted in a way that is not cured by sleep.

“There’s no need for you to be restrained outside of this room,” Yixing frowns. “You don’t have other visitors.”

“They had me in solitary for a while.”

“Yifan,” Yixing says, then stutters, stumbles on the last syllable, swallows the rest of his sentence. Yifan turns his face away. His jawline has always been defined, but it is sharp as a blade now. “You haven’t been eating well,” Yixing says.

“That’s what happens when you get thrown into a hole for days,” Yifan says dryly. “It’s not like you can do anything about it, Captain.”

This time he lets Yixing retract his hand. “At least tell me what you did.”

“Zitao was transferred to Block C recently,” Yifan shrugs.

“With you,” Yixing says.

“Three cells down,” Yifan confirms. “You know how it goes. With a face like his.”

Icy dread floods Yixing’s veins. It must show on his face, because Yifan goes to reach for him, forgetting the handcuffs for a second. The metallic chain rattles, his arm suspended mid-movement.

“Anyway,” Yifan continues, almost conversational, putting his hand down again. “I had to beat up a few people.”

“Is he—”

“He’s fine,” Yifan says. His gaze is cat-like, intent. “But he’s not the only one. So I haven’t been allowed to mingle lot, lately.”

The memory burns like a fresh brand. _I don’t work with scum like you,_ Yifan had spat, before snapping his fingers. Two men twice Yixing’s size had appeared, dragged the fat man away. The police had found his decomposing body on the pier weeks later. Yixing had been there, in the shadows, hand gripping his gun tight. Close enough to hear Yifan mutter, angry, _I don’t hurt kids, and I don’t sell people._ A senseless strain of humanity in an otherwise monstrous gangster, someone Yixing has watched dismember a man while he was still alive and screaming.

 _I’m in love with you,_ Yixing remembers thinking. _You are horrible and beautiful and I’m in love with you._

Here, Yifan is powerless. Here, Yifan knows, too. Yixing used to be scared of it—that deep, deep longing. Yixing used to be terrified of the way he wanted this man, terrified of _why,_ until he walked into the interview room and realized he wanted him here too, stripped down and weaponless and human. All Yifan has now is his strange decency, and Yixing still wants him. The relief of that washes over him every day, rising tide.

 _You’re a good man,_ he wants to tell Yifan, but it would be a lie, and Yixing doesn’t lie. Yifan is only good when he chooses to, and he doesn’t choose to often. To this day, Yixing regrets an absurd amount of things, but never the fact Yifan is behind bars.

All he can give is “I’ll have a word with the superintendent.” Yifan doesn’t like it, snarls, _I can take care of myself,_ which is true. “You’re serving life. That’s punishment enough. I’m not going to let you starve.”

Yifan laughs, lifeless. “You said something different, at the trial.” Yixing raises a curious eyebrow. “You said I had done unspeakable things. That not even death would be enough.”

His hands ball into fists. “I argued that the death penalty would be too easy, Kris. I kept you alive.” It’s the first time he’s admitted that out loud. He thinks of Junhui, and his ridiculous insistence that the Xu son is more valuable alive than dead, and shivers.

“Maybe I wanted to die,” Yifan says.

“You love yourself way too much for that.” He has to go. The more he visits, the more vulnerable he allows himself to be, and even here, chained up, Yifan is still the most dangerous thing he’s ever held. And by God, even when they’re miles away, Yixing is always holding him too close.

“And you don’t hate me nearly as much as you want everyone to believe, Captain,” Yifan counterattacks.

“I hate you enough,” Yixing says, and it isn’t a lie.

 

\--

 

Undercover fresh out of the Academy, records stripped, identity erased, past entirely forged, Yixing sometimes wonders how he even developed the barest sense of self. Love for the Motherland, the sharpest sense of duty, and an even sharper aim; these are his only constants.

Five years climbing stair after stair tirelessly for a chance at a _glimpse_ of the dragon. Yixing will never forget his first eyeful of Kris Wu, silver hair slicked back, black designer suit, his nonchalance at the roulette table, the amber colored drink in his short glass. Two years gravitating around him, closer and closer and closer like a magnet, and then one, one terrible year where Yifan knew his name, where Yifan called his name sometimes like a promise, trust settled heavy against the roof of his mouth. Then seven long, draining years of _this_.

Yixing had thought he’d like routine, after spending his twenties so chaotically. At thirty-five, going on thirty-six, there are few things he resents more than the sight of his empty, perfect apartment. His mother doesn’t ask about marriage anymore, which honestly just makes him feel worse. _I’m wedded to my work,_ he jokes sometimes, but he can see in her eyes that she finally believes him. She’s proud, she’s not faking it, he knows that. She has the picture from the newspaper, the very first front page about Kris’s arrest, she still has it framed. He loves her for that. He loves her.

She knows he visits Tilanqiao. She doesn’t understand why, although he has tried to explain, multiple times. _I think he can become better, mama, through labor, through—me, maybe, I think—_

His duty, she told him once, was fulfilled the day of Wu Yifan’s arrest. He doesn’t know how to counter that particular argument, not when he agrees with it. He’s never told her about Yifan’s dark eyes the day he saved Yixing’s life, he never could find the word to paint the picture; blood splatters on their clothes, chests heaving, fear curling its tendrils around Yixing’s wrists like rope. _I don’t waste life,_ Yifan had said. Then, _what’s your name, boy?_ Years later, Yifan’s voice had sounded the same when he had asked, _What do you want? I’ll get it for you._

 

\--

 

“What do you want?” Yifan asks him. “You come here way too often, lately.”

“I’m checking up on you. I’ve had free time. I’m on leave.”

“Something happened,” Yifan says. A statement, not a question.

“Nothing happened,” Yixing says, but Yifan knows how to read him now. This is _Zhang Yixing,_ and Yifan knows what lying looks like on Zhang Yixing. It looks like the man he thought he knew once. It looks like Lay.

“Did you finally lose it?” he mocks, cruel. “Weren’t they already forcing you to see someone, after you spent half your precious life around trash like me? Do you come to see me instead, is that why you can barely keep it together?”

“Shut the _fuck_ up,” Yixing barks, hand slamming hard against the table, making it rattle.

From outside, a worried voice asks, “Captain?”

“We’re fine,” Yixing tells the guard. He turns back to Yifan. “You shut your fucking mouth.” His sleeves are rolled up, his palm pressed to the table, open, trembling slightly in anger. Yifan’s eyes follow the one bulging vein that travels up his forearm, hungry.

“You come to me,” Yifan says, _doesn’t shut up,_ because he has to—to know. “You always come back to me.”

“If you don’t stop talking right now, Kris—”

“What are you gonna do?”

The power structure is reversed, here. Yifan has yelled at him like this, before. Has spat out orders, has threatened him, on one notable occasion has wrapped his hand around Yixing’s throat. A job badly done, calling for punishment he didn’t really dish out. The light purple lines on Yixing’s neck had felt like enough, then. Yixing hadn’t covered them up, had let them fade out in the open.

He doesn’t see the slap coming. Backhanded, a sharp sting of pain, his bottom lip busting open. He tastes metal before he really feels the hit.

“I told you to stop talking.”

He can’t take his eyes off Yixing’s arm. “Police brutality, uh?” he smirks. A drop of blood rolls down his chin. Yixing watches it, a look on his face Yifan recognizes. It’s never been this dangerous before.

“I’m—” Yixing’s voice breaks weirdly, almost in disbelief, “— _Yifan,_ I’m so fucking sorry—”

“You never call me Yifan.” He licks his lip, presses against the cut to stop the flow. “I wish it was your tongue,” he says, very deliberately, slowly. “I’d let you hit me again if it meant you’d kiss me.”

“Yifan,” Yixing repeats, like a wounded animal.

“I’m not blind.”

“It’s nothing, it’s not—I don’t come here because—”

“You’re the only one who says my name,” Yifan interrupts him. “Any of my names. Zitao calls me boss, sometimes, when he thinks he’ll get away with it. Otherwise it’s my ID number. No one calls me by my fucking name.”

“I come here because you matter to me,” Yixing finally says. “You matter to me, you know you matter to me. Don’t use it against me.”

It’s hard not to want to kill him. Yifan thinks, if he had a knife, he’d use it on them both. But it’s wrapped in deeper notions, the bloodlust. Once upon a time Yifan looked at him and saw only beauty. Saw him and thought, God, I want this. Lay was so good with his hands, so good with a gun, even better at _people._ A smart kid, and Yifan had always liked _smart._

He’ll never know how much of what he saw was _Lay._

 

\--

 

After the trial, the day Yifan got transferred from his temporary jail cell to Tilanqiao Prison, Yixing went to a high-class bar in downtown Shanghai dressed in his most expensive suit, and got tragically drunk on 50 year old Whiskey.

He doesn’t remember the name of the man he brought back to his hotel room, nor his face; but he remembers he was tall, and his hair was bleached, and Yixing cried against his spine, two syllables like a dying breath on his lips as he came, weaker than a whisper.

 

\--

 

Junhui was wearing a white shirt under his jacket. It’s all Yixing can make sense of, in the direct aftermath, the image playing and replaying over and over right before his eyes, no matter if he closes or opens them. Blood spreading so fast on the white fabric, like a conquering army taking land. The way he had stumbled, the way his body had jerked, his surprised expression as he’d pressed his hand to his chest. Xu Minghao’s scream, how Yixing had raised his own gun on autopilot, shot shot shot to win, to _kill,_ his only coherent thought a string of _no no no._

 

\--

 

“Lay,” Yifan says, and the way he pronounces the fake name is so shocked Yixing wonders for a second, what sort of image he presents. Hagard, maybe, haunted, maybe, pale as a ghost; that is how he feels. A ghost. “Yixing,” Yifan says, and he goes to get up, once again forgetting the cuffs, almost takes the damn table with him. In Yixing’s body, the action reverberates, the yearning for Yifan’s touch too terrible to deny. Today, there are no walls.

“He’s dead,” he says, and even to his own ears, he sounds so hollow it’s scary.

“Your boy,” Yifan says, after a long, dreadful beat of silence.

“My best agent.” _My brother. My little brother._ “I lost my best agent.”

His knees—give in, he thinks. He thinks. It hurts when he hits the ground. He hasn’t slept in days. He took twice the indicated dose of Motrin before coming here.

Yifan looks at him, desperate. His right hand is picking at his left handcuff. Yixing has _never_ wanted that hand on his body more than he does right now. He lets his head fall, rests his forehead on Yifan’s thigh. His shoulders are shaking—he thinks. Laughter, the nervous kind, the hysteric kind, the sleep deprived, grief-drunk kind.

“He’s gone,” he sobs, dry, “I sent him there to die.”

Lips on the crown of his head, nose pressed into his hair, Yifan finds a way. “Baby,” he murmurs, “Stop crying.”

It’s in death, only in death, Yixing realizes, that they can be like this. The closest possible to the truth. If he ever comes back here he will go insane. He’s a good man, a good citizen, he’s a good son, he wants to be—he wants to be a good _husband,_ one day.

“They were sleeping together,” he tells Yifan, voice muffled by the ugly, rough material of his jumpsuit. “I warned him, and he still—” God, he is _angry_ now, fireworks inside his ribcage, too loud, “He couldn’t stop thinking with his _dick_ for a _fucking second_ —”

Yifan kisses the top of his head. Yixing hiccups.

“We can’t all be smart like you,” Yifan says, gentle, almost light. “In another life, I am a better man, and you don’t have to resist.”

He raises his head, slowly. Yifan’s lips slide to his nose, his eyelids. Not his mouth. Yixing opens his eyes. He’s kneeling, and even if Yifan isn’t sitting on his throne anymore, this is where _this_ was always headed.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Yifan says very, very low, breath hot on Yixing’s skin, and Yixing isn’t sure what loss exactly he’s referring to. “I’m sorry,” he says again, and this time Yixing knows for _sure_ this one isn’t about Junhui.

“I hate you,” is all he can reply. “God, I hate you.”

“Me too, officer,” Yifan says, and kisses his cheekbone.

 

\--

 

Yixing sells his apartment. Three guys from the station come to help with the truck, and together it takes less time than he anticipated, so he orders pizza and beer and they sit down on the naked hardwood floor and eat and don’t talk about Yixing’s botched operation.

 

\--

 

There’s a cardboard box, _TO THROW AWAY_ written in bold, black marker. At the bottom, under magazines and a broken frame he should have gotten rid of years ago, is a visitor pass for Tilanqiao Prison.

           

**Author's Note:**

> im so sorry im SO sorry i just want to remind everyone that by my own law has a happy ending tag and i dont lie about these things 
> 
> that being said come yell at me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/yifanapologist) anyway.,


End file.
